HEALTHCARE Roundtable.

PositionDiscussion

Every month, Utah Business partners with Holland & Hart and Big-D Construction to host roundtable events featuring industry insiders. This month we invited the top healthcare specialists to discuss medical marijuana, mental health resources, and transparency in the industry. Moderated by Dave Gessel, executive vice president of the Utah Hospital Association, here are a few highlights from the event.

IF THE MEDICAID EXPANSION PASSES, WHAT WILL IT DO FOR OUR STATE AND WHO WILL IT AFFECT?

Jeana Hutchings | Benefits Practice Leader, Principal | Diversified Insurance Group

The purpose of the ACA was to provide subsidized insurance to this population that was not getting it from their employer. We still have that gap now, this many years later. So for groups that are under, that are not required to provide insurance, if they have lower-income workers, they probably aren't offering coverage. Many employers have moved their employees to part-time, they have two part-time jobs, and they don't qualify for employer-subsidized insurance anywhere. But if a group is over, they are still required to provide affordable coverage to their employees. But they still have to pay a certain percent of a single premium, so for the rest of their family it's still unaffordable. And so the family is going without coverage as well.

Dr. Donna Milavetz | CED | OnsiTeCare

The big challenge is that reimbursements for Medicaid traditionally have been really low, and primary care providers specifically have really been reimbursed at a loss for their services, which makes it really challenging to actually see the existing number of Medicaid patients. So the question that I have for the group is how does that impact sort of Medicaid expansion for our state?

Alan Pruhs | Executive Director | Association for Utah Community Health

It's going to require some different ways of thinking between Medicaid, ACOs, and the system. So whether it gets down to different types of payment structures, whether it's taking risk on the primary care level, whether it's upstream or downstream risk, and are you going to pay them to manage the patient and what does that mean? Primary care is typically the last to be thought of when it comes to those bundled payments or different ways of looking at that, but that's an area that has to be discussed in the future.

Matt Slonaker | Executive Director | Utah Health Policy Project

More importantly for me is the financial protection aspects of having...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT